Singapore

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple
Originally uploaded by annebyebye

When we went to New-Zealand, we had a stop of 16 hours in Singapore. Because our stop took this long, we went off the airport and into the city and saw some beautiful temples.

You can find more pictures on Flickr!

Finally finished!

After days and evenings of puzzling and looking for just the right picture to put on that page, finally my photobook of our fantastic New-Zealand trip is finished and delivered!

For printing I chose Blurb, which I stumbled upon on Melissa's blog, and I must say that the book is very nice. Working in the graphic industry, so I know my printing options, this book has been professionally printed, and it looks very... well, professional. I did make the layout in Indesign and not in BookSmart, the software you have to download.

When I want to make another photobook, Blurb will definitely be one, or maybe the only, supplier I'll use.

Nice to know, you can also sell your book to others, and you can publish a 15-page preview. You can have a look at mine if you will.

Finally I can spend some time on kitsuke again ^_^

Real Geisha Real Women

As of yesterday I've got the dvd "Real Geisha Real Women", directed by Peter MacIntosh.

It's a very good documentary that gives us a glimpse of the life of geiko and maiko these days. You get to see interviews with different maiko and geiko, with friends and family.

I'm very happy that I bought it, and because I was one of the first 500 people that ordered it, it's signed by Miehina, John Wells (director of photography) and Peter MacIntosh, and there were 2 name-stickers of Miehina with it ^_^

© Photo: Peter MacIntosh

Wolfje!

Since saterday afternoon our dog Pollie has got a new playmate: Wolfje (or in English Wolfy). Just like Pollie she's a typical farmdog you see on farms in the south of our country. She's very playful, and has only 1 thing on her mind... How to get out of my dogpenn!

But it's very lovely to see how both Pollie and Wolfje are getting along after a few days, and how they get more and more playful with each other.

Fox & Dizzy

This is a bit of a sentimental post...

When we came back of our vacation in New-Zealand, we got welcomed by 1 dog instead of 2. In the second week of our vacation our dog Fox (after Fox Mulder) had too many internal bleedings, and my parents-in-law had to put her to sleep. They didn't tell us on the phone, because there was nothing we could do about it. But it was strange getting home and not knowing yet.

When we called for her she didn't come, but hey, she had a mind of her own and if she didn't wanted to come and greet us, too bad for us. So we thought this was just one of those days. But when we got indoors, my parents-in-law told us. And then you notice that in front of them and the friend who picked you up at the airport, your behaviour is different then if you are alone...

With Fox gone, last year ended with a loss, but it also started with one. We lost our youngest dog Dizzy in January. The hard part of losing Dizzy is that we (still) don't know what happened to her. Now I have to explain something. We live on a farm and we (I actually have to say my parents-i-l) have some acres of ground, and our dogs live freely on that property. They don't wear collars, only if they have lots of flees, they don't get out on a leech, sometimes they don't even listen, but they can go wherever they want to. Go and pursue some hares, rabbits or mice. They live in dogparadise.

And Dizzy just didn't came home one day in January. We called for her, we drove a couple of blocks in our neighbourhood at night, looked and called for her days after that, made posters, etc etc. She probably got stuck in a rabbit hole and couldn't come out, but we don't know that for sure. And that's the hard part, not knowing.

So this post is for those 2 sweet doggies.

After-holiday fun

It's been a while since I posted, and this one isn't kimono-related either!

Well, the reason is that I've been to New-Zealand the last month for a holiday. And now that I'm back there are lots of after-holiday things to do... I've kept a traveljournal and made loads of pictures. The pictures will be added to my Flickr-account, and the journal has to be copied to my mac, which takes a lot of time.

If you're interested in reading the journal, it's in Dutch now, you can use Google Translate to translate the whole page, otherwise please let me know. I can also translate it myself, but that may take a while..

Kimono day

Today I decided to have a kimono-day. Didn't have much to do for a change, and it could be that some friends might visite to browse through some vinyl we're selling, so I thought, why not. Good opportunity to practise some kitsuke, and I wanted to see if the brown woven obi Misuchi gave me would match with my black and brown striped komon.

And it is a perfect match! As for obiage and obijime I choose my green set. It may not be the right set, but I think it looks okay. I do have a black obiage, and I thought about pairing it with a silvery-looking obijime, but green looked better. And finally a flat obijime-knot!

One thing did I found out today was that doing laundry can be done in kimono! But lets face it, that is just putting your laundy in the washer and later putting it in the drier. Nothing difficult about that, even when you're dressed in kimono ^_~

Still, I got some cold feet, so I changed my tabi for some socks and warm slippers (sorry, but I don't know the english word for pantoffels). Charming isn't it ;-)